[Aurornis]

The reason that’s a news story is because the outcome is unusual.

When things are normal and happening all the time, they’re not reported as abnormal outcomes.

The world is a big place. Being able to think of a counter-example does not negate a general point.

[jcranmer]

No, it's actually fairly common in crashes between motor vehicles and pedestrians (or cyclists) to place most or all of the blame on the pedestrian.

When the Uber self-driving car struck and killed the pedestrian, not only did the internet peanut gallery largely blame the pedestrian for the first 24 hours or so after the death, but the local police force did as well for a couple of days. I rather suspect that without the national spotlight of being the first pedestrian killed by a self-driving car, the local police force would have been happy to absolve Uber and the driver of any liability.

[AnthonyMouse]

It should obviously be possible for a pedestrian to be at fault in a collision. If someone without the right of way steps in front of a moving car, there is often nothing the vehicle could physically do to prevent the collision at that point. That's what right of way is for -- you have rules that, if everybody follows them, nobody gets hit, and then if someone gets hit because someone wasn't following the rules, the fault is with the person not following the rules.

[jcranmer]

The dominant cause of pedestrian fatalities is not "pedestrian steps right in front of a moving car," but things like "driver didn't see pedestrian in middle of crosswalk" (usually because, e.g., looking instead for vehicle traffic to make a right turn on red). Sure, it's possible for a pedestrian to be at fault, but even if they step out from behind an occluded object, if a driver is fast enough to kill them, then the driver is almost certainly already at fault because they were driving faster than conditions warranted.

[lelanthran]

> Sure, it's possible for a pedestrian to be at fault, but even if they step out from behind an occluded object, if a driver is fast enough to kill them, then the driver is almost certainly already at fault because they were driving faster than conditions warranted.

That's not true: 30km/h is enough to kill, and that's a very sedate speed.

Whether we like it or not, pedestrians and cyclists have to also follow the rules.

If you want change the rules, well that's a different argument to the one you appearing to make which is that certain entities should not be bound by any rules.

[ohnei]

What sounds sedate to you is not encoded in any rules and certainly wasn't considered sedate when the laws were written in most jurisdictions.

[lelanthran]

You contradict yourself, the laws you refer to are the rules you say don't exist.

[sandworm101]

The dominant cause of pedestrian deaths is the same as drivers: alcohol. But unlike drivers, pedestrian are allowed to walk around drunk. So we dont even talk about it. We pretend it doesnt happen. It does. It happens all the time. The drunk pedestrian being hit by a car is the norm.

>>2008, nearly 40 per cent of pedestrians killed on Canadian roads were impaired, with two-thirds of them having a blood alcohol concentration more than double the legal limit. In fact, of all the fatally injured pedestrians with alcohol in their systems, fewer than one in five was at or below the legal driving limit of 0.08 blood alcohol concentration (BAC), according to the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators* (CCMTA).

https://canadasafetycouncil.org/impaired-walking/

And just try discussing drunk biking and you will be run out of town by a spandex army shouting about thier "right" to use the roads while drunk or high.

[thisisidiotic]

I saw this happen. Went drinking with a friend in my early 20s. Him a well seasoned alcoholic, us both hammered waiting for a crosswalk signal. The signal never came. Traffic had a break. He finished a statement he was making, and that internal loop closure was enough to tell his mind that the traffic had stopped, and crossing was safe. It was not safe. A lifted truck came flying through the town square at around 50pmh in a 30mph zone. The lights were green obviously, but my friend had already stepped out right as the truck was crossing through. I screamed and tried to grab him back but could not safely grab him. He got nailed full speed, went flying about 20 feet up in the air before smacking the ground. He did live, was permanently disfigured (jaw surgeries and stuff) I'm glad I was there to make a emergency services call immediately, but at the same time, I will never ever forget that image in my mind. This was the worst time I saw someone hit with a car. The second worse was an attempted murder, and the third time was just some absent minded autistic woman bumping an old lady over in a cross walk. She was unharmed. I don't like people, alcohol, or cars anymore.

[WalterBright]

Just the other day, a middle aged cyclist decided to hug my bumper as I went downhill at about 35 mph. I rolled down the window and shouted "back off please". He looked surprised, but backed off.

A bicycle's brakes are far less effective than a car's. I don't know how a man got to middle age not knowing this. A lot of cyclists ride like they have an invisible shield protecting them.

[WalterBright]

> it's possible for a pedestrian to be at fault

When I use a crosswalk, I wait until the cars stop before I cross. It's nuts to step into it assuming the cars will stop.

[Semaphor]

In Germany it's illegal not to stop if a pedestrian is close to the crosswalk.

[WalterBright]

I'll still wait for the car to stop before stepping in front of it. This is just common sense.

[culopatin]

But are pedestrians considerate and make a contract with the driver eye to eye to signal “hey, I see you, i see you see me, thanks for stopping, I will be crossing”.

Or they are looking at their phones standing on the wheelchair ramp or chatting with someone, kinda going in, maybe, maybe not, and when it looks like they’ll be crossing the street parallel to yours and you start going they change their minds and cross diagonally in front of you?

Because I’m all for pedestrian safety and prioritization. But SF has gone so “safe” that it’s back to unsafe. Runners will join an intersection from behind a tree in front of a car that had stopped and was starting to go without even looking up. People join a crossing looking down or away from the flow of traffic, it’s insane to me. I find that kids cross streets much better than adults here. A kid will stop, look, check if they were seen and then proceed.

[xen0]

And yet I would still stop and wait before walking out. The law will not save me against 1.5 tons of metal hitting me by accident.

[dvdkon]

This seems like it needs a regional distinction. I regularly do this since cars do reliably stop/slow down (in Prague, and not right in front of cars).

[AnthonyMouse]

> The dominant cause of pedestrian fatalities is not "pedestrian steps right in front of a moving car," but things like "driver didn't see pedestrian in middle of crosswalk" (usually because, e.g., looking instead for vehicle traffic to make a right turn on red).

And the driver is at fault in the cases where the driver is at fault. 18% of pedestrian fatalities are cases where the driver was drunk. Meanwhile 30% of pedestrian fatalities are cases where the pedestrian was drunk.

Your example is actually a pretty rare cause of pedestrian fatalities because even if someone doesn't see a pedestrian, cars turning right on red are almost always traveling at low speed.

> if a driver is fast enough to kill them, then the driver is almost certainly already at fault because they were driving faster than conditions warranted.

There is a double digit percent chance of a fatality if a vehicle hits a pedestrian at 25 MPH. The vast majority of roads allow speeds of 25 MPH or more. That doesn't mean you can stop if someone without the right of way who you had no reason to expect to step out directly in front of a car suddenly does.

[jibal]

Why attack a strawman?

[AnthonyMouse]

The case in question appears to have been one in which the pedestrian was crossing a four-lane road outside of a crosswalk at night. That seems like as reasonable a case as any to attribute some fault to the pedestrian.

Meanwhile:

> Sure, it's possible for a pedestrian to be at fault, but even if they step out from behind an occluded object, if a driver is fast enough to kill them, then the driver is almost certainly already at fault because they were driving faster than conditions warranted.

"A pedestrian can be at fault in a fatality but the driver would still be at fault anyway" is apparently not a straw man.

[jibal]

No one said that it's not possible for a pedestrian to be at fault in a collision; they said the opposite. Therefore it's a strawman.

> "A pedestrian can be at fault in a fatality but the driver would still be at fault anyway"

That's not what they actually said ... work on your reading comprehension, ability to reason, and intellectual honesty--faking up quotations is not legit. a) A pedestrian could be at fault in other scenarios, like running into the middle of the street in dark clothing at night. In California, if a pedestrian is in a crosswalk then the driver is legally at fault. b) Morally, both parties could be at fault.

I won't respond further.

[AnthonyMouse]

> No one said that it's not possible for a pedestrian to be at fault in a collision; they said the opposite.

The intention of the comment you accused of replying to a straw man was meant to point out that a pedestrian could be at fault instead of the driver.

That reply is pretty clearly arguing that even if the pedestrian was at fault, the driver would still have to be at fault anyway. Summarizing an argument after quoting it isn't misquoting it.

> A pedestrian could be at fault in other scenarios, like running into the middle of the street in dark clothing at night.

There is nothing to distinguish this from the original argument where the driver could still be be accused of "driving faster than conditions warranted" because visibility is lower at night.

> In California, if a pedestrian is in a crosswalk then the driver is legally at fault

And strict liability rules like that often lead to ridiculous outcomes, e.g. if someone jumps out of the back of a truck into an intersection and you then hit them, technically they were a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Or there is a pedestrian standing next to a crosswalk but they're stationary and talking on their phone without seeming to want to enter the crosswalk, so you start to proceed and then they step in front of your car.

[adrr]

Is it? Laura Bush ran a stop sign and killed her friend. No charges. Caitlyn Jenner hit a car and pushed it into on coming traffic killed someone. No charges. I can keep going and going.

[galleywest200]

These people you listed are wealthy and powerful, maybe blame the justice system catering to the rich instead of regulations for car crashes.

[adrr]

And these self driving companies aren't wealthy and powerful? Why treat them differently?

[asveikau]

No, the reason that's a news story is because many people were upset about the accident, which killed an entire family of 4 while they took the kids to the zoo on their wedding anniversary. Even by the standards of auto wrecks it was heart wrenching. A lot of people felt the driver was negligent and deserved prison.

[keerthiko]

there are many[0] many[1] data points like this. even if individual ones seem like outliers, when there's this many outliers, it's like there's at least two distinct lines depicting consequences, one material and one not.

those who probably have exhausted all the various escape hatches built into the "vehicular manslaughter & mutilation forgiveness program" worldwide by the automobile industry, may get a year or so in prison — usually extreme repeat offenders, high profile deaths, homicide cases, or drivers who were already criminals just having the charge thrown in.

most people who "slipped up" are just fined and forgotten, at the cost of global pedestrian safety.

[0]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1856923/do-s...

[1]: https://gothamist.com/news/95-of-nyc-drivers-avoid-criminal-...

[iknowstuff]

You are wrong. The easiest way to murder someone in America and get a slap on the wrist is to run them over in your car.

[mindslight]

If you don't have a lot of money for your legal defense, then make sure to have a bicycle in your trunk which you can place next to the victim afterwards.

[aidenn0]

This was just in my local news 2 days ago; it doesn't seem that strange for California:

https://www.santamariasun.com/news-2/fatal-dui-case-closes-w...

Last year I was on the jury for someone who drove drunk, caused an accident, and fled the scene. They had multiple prior DUIs but still had their license.

[edit]

Some details from the story for those who don't want to click through:

An unlicensed driver drank, did some cocaine, drove on one of the more dangerous stretches of road in the area, crossed the centerline and killed someone. Probation.

[ndsipa_pomu]

> The reason that’s a news story is because the outcome is unusual.

Yes and no.

Here in the UK, I read/post a bit on https://road.cc about road cycling and the perils of traffic and poor road designs. There's a surprising amount of clearly illegal driving that is rarely punished severely and it's notable that due to juries being motornormative, the prosecution will often not attempt to push for "dangerous driving" and will instead go or "careless driving" as it's notoriously difficult to get a jury to give a guilty verdict for "dangerous". I suspect a lot of jurors are thinking "I sometimes don't pay attention when driving, so that could have been me".

There's also a lot of media bias (I'm looking at you, BBC) with reporting of RTCs (Road Traffic Collisions - they should not be referred to as "accidents" as that is loaded language), especially when one of the participants is a cyclist. A lot of stories are framed as "car and cyclist in collision", rather than "driver and cyclist in collision" or even "car driven into cyclist" (that last one may be contentious, though I propose that it is usually factual). The issue is the use of the "passive" framing so that it doesn't give the impressions that a driver is likely to be at fault (percentage wise, driver inattention is the most likely cause of RTCs). See https://www.rc-rg.com/home for more details on reporting guidelines.

Also, most RTCs don't even merit a news report as they are so commonplace.